Lightning over Phoenix 8/31/15

Posted by on Sep 01 2015

I heard the wind come up tonight, and when I stepped outside, I knew it was time to do more experimentation with my GoPro Hero 4 Silver’s Night Lapse Mode.

I had no idea what I was about to wind up with.

I uploaded this in all of it’s original 4k glory. I hope you enjoy!

–== 2015 Cost of RV Life ==–
230 Days on the Road
42 Free nights
201 Paid nights
243 Total nights

2015 Total Spent: $9551.74
2015 Average Daily Cost (lodging only): $21.06/day
2015 Average Daily Cost (lodging + fuel): $32/day
2015 Average Daily Cost (everything): $39.31/day
2014 Average Daily Cost: $43.49/day

–== WHERE AM I NOW? ==–
Follow my adventures in realtime at: http://www.YarrVee.com

Music: Organoid – Sky Of Blue

Using GoPro Night Mode to capture the ISS!

Posted by on Aug 23 2015

WATCH ME!

For the last several nights, I’ve wanted to go outside and experiment some more with the GoPro Night Lapse mode to capture satellite trails, since I had so much fun watching them in Folsom when I was camping with RV Lady. However, night after night, it’s been too late when I look up the passes for the evening on Heaven’s Above, all the bright passes had already ended for the evening. I think it has something to do with being this far south, but it’s pretty rare to have a visible satellite pass after about 9:30pm, and they start shortly after 7pm. In Folsom the last passes were much closer to 10:30, and they’d start about 8:15.

Well, tonight I remembered in the nick of time to check Heaven’s Above, and I saw that the ISS was passing overhead, and for once, it wasn’t a “barely visible down on the horizon” pass, but up at a respectable 40+ degrees! The down side is that I only had about 5 minutes to prepare!

*FEATURED IN THIS VIDEO*
GoPro Hero 4 Silver: http://amzn.to/1h55FkT
GorillaPod for GoPro: http://amzn.to/1Jd8l7J

*MUSIC: Courtesy NoCopyrightSounds*
Track: _Continuum – Aware_
Listen on Spotify: spoti.fi/1KtyhgS
Listen on YouTube: youtu.be/BWdZjZV6bEk
Support on iTunes: apple.co/1G45663

–== 2015 Cost of RV Life ==–
221 Days on the Road
42 Free nights
192 Paid nights
234 Total nights

2015 Total Spent: $9421.15
2015 Average Daily Cost (lodging only): $21.31/day
2015 Average Daily Cost (lodging + fuel): $32.67/day
2015 Average Daily Cost (everything): $40.26/day
2014 Average Daily Cost: $43.49/day

–== WHERE AM I NOW? ==–
Follow my adventures in realtime at: http://www.YarrVee.com

*TRANSCRIPT*
Hello, everyone!

Happy Saturday! I hope you’re having a great day. I hope you HAD a great day. You’ll probably see this tonight or tomorrow.
It’s the 21st of August. It’s probably 104 degrees out and I thought I would throw out a little update!
I’ve been experimenting with some nighttime photography with the GoPro. I got a great shot of the ISS flying over…
The International Space Station flying over. So, I’m going to put that right here and go ahead and talk over it.
What I did is I used my Gorilla Pod to keep the camera stable – I set it on the top of the MINI. I used the Night Lapse Mode to capture the ISS going over.
and I used settings…I think I used ISO limit of 400, 15 second exposure, Continuous mode, ProTune ON, 3000K White Balance, and soft sharpnes, with no EV Comp.
Now…then I did a series of test shots with the GoPro in Single Shot Mode.
This one is a 2 second shot.
This one has a lens opening of 5 seconds.
This one is 10 seconds.
This one is 15 seconds.
And this one, which I think is my favorite of the bunch, I just left everything on AUTO and let the GoPro do its thing.
GoPro’s actually really cool for night mode. One of the things I learned about the Hero 4 is that you can set it up in Night Mode and it will do autoexposure for any given light.
(In fact…This video was shot with Night Mode turned on!)
You can put it in Night Mode, and then leave it in Night Mode during the day.

Thanks for liking, thanks for subscribing, thanks for jumping over to the website and signing up for the email list. Thanks for liking the Facebook Page!
Again, Commentary is where it’s at! You can interact with me here, you can interact with me on Twitter, on Facebook, on the website…
I love you guys!
I’m mostly doing the videos for me, so when I’m old and grey I can remember all the stuff that I did when I was first getting started. I’ve even done that now, I’ve gone back and watched some of those first videos, from, like even before I got to Amarillo, and am pretty impressed at…just the changes that have gone in within myself and my presence on camera, and how I’m shooting video and the changes in my life since then.
I feel so much more relaxed!
Anyway, Commentary’s where it’s at! I try to get back to you all. Sometimes I may not have anything more to add above and beyond what you’ve said, so I’ll just give you a thumbs up but you guys are the best, and thanks for coming along for All the Adventure and None of the Scurvy, and we’ll talk to you soon!
Bye!

Experimenting with the GoPro Night Lapse Mode

Posted by on Aug 21 2015

For the last several nights, I’ve wanted to go outside and experiment some more with the GoPro Night Lapse mode to capture satellite trails, since I had so much fun watching them in Folsom when I was camping with RV Lady. However, night after night, it’s been too late when I look up the passes for the evening on Heaven’s Above, all the bright passes had already ended for the evening. I think it has something to do with being this far south, but it’s pretty rare to have a visible satellite pass after about 9:30pm, and they start shortly after 7pm. In Folsom the last passes were much closer to 10:30, and they’d start about 8:15.

Well, tonight I remembered in the nick of time to check Heaven’s Above, and I saw that the ISS was passing overhead, and for once, it wasn’t a “barely visible down on the horizon” pass, but up at a respectable 40+ degrees! The down side is that I only had about 5 minutes to prepare!

BEHOLD THE FIVE MINUTE PREP-TIME ISS PASS!

Click to Embiggen

The top to bottom trail, and the two at the bottom right are aircraft. The horizontal pass with small gaps is the ISS. This is a series of 12 images shot with a Hero 4 Silver in GoPro Night Lapse mode with ProTune turned on. 15 second exposures on Continuous mode, with an ISO limit of 200, GoPro color turned on and composited in Markus Enzweiler’s excellent StarStax.

Nighttime GoPro photography is fun! This is a 4 image stack using GoPro Night Lapse Mode, 10 second shutter, Continuous interval, ProTune on, 3000K White Balance, GoPro color, ISO limit of 400, Low Sharpness, and no Exposure Value (EV) Compensation.

StarStaX_G0030243-G0030246_lighten

 

The next 4 images are single shots with different settings for comparison.

GoPro Night Lapse Mode, 2 second shutter, ProTune on, 5500K White Balance, Flat color, ISO limit of 800, Low Sharpness, and no Exposure Value (EV) Compensation.

GoPro Night Lapse Mode, 2 second shutter, ProTune on, 5500K White Balance, Flat color, ISO limit of 800, Low Sharpness, and no Exposure Value (EV) Compensation.

 

GoPro Night Lapse Mode, 5 second shutter, ProTune on, 5500K White Balance, Flat color, ISO limit of 800, Low Sharpness, and no Exposure Value (EV) Compensation.

GoPro Night Lapse Mode, 5 second shutter, ProTune on, 5500K White Balance, Flat color, ISO limit of 800, Low Sharpness, and no Exposure Value (EV) Compensation.

 

GoPro Night Lapse Mode, 10 second shutter, ProTune on, 5500K White Balance, Flat color, ISO limit of 800, Low Sharpness, and no Exposure Value (EV) Compensation.

GoPro Night Lapse Mode, 10 second shutter, ProTune on, 5500K White Balance, Flat color, ISO limit of 800, Low Sharpness, and no Exposure Value (EV) Compensation.

This one is starting to get a little overexposed from the long shutter time.

GoPro Night Lapse Mode, 15 second shutter, ProTune on, 5500K White Balance, Flat color, ISO limit of 800, Low Sharpness, and no Exposure Value (EV) Compensation.

Single frame from GoPro Night Lapse Mode, 15 second shutter, ProTune on, 5500K White Balance, Flat color, ISO limit of 800, Low Sharpness, and no Exposure Value (EV) Compensation.

And finally, this is what you get if you just leave the shutter time to Automatic with a 3000K White Balance and GoPro Color…

Single frame from GoPro Night Lapse Mode, 15 second shutter, ProTune on, 5500K White Balance, Flat color, ISO limit of 800, Low Sharpness, and no Exposure Value (EV) Compensation.

Single frame from GoPro Night Lapse Mode, Automatic Shutter, ProTune on, 3000K White Balance, GoPro color, ISO limit of 800, Low Sharpness, and no Exposure Value (EV) Compensation.

I’m really starting to be amazed at the sheer breadth of capability that the GoPro has.